marlene dumas is a goddess. i’ve been so taken by her. disquietingly ethereal watercolor and ink paintings instill shivers with overt, shameful sexuality. her ashy corpse-like subjects feel like people i’ve met and spoken to, or seen on the street in passing just a week ago. she is, in my opinion, one of few contemporary artists who manage to manipulate figurative forms into profound intangible agents of cognition. her nudes and portraits interrogate the viewer, impeding he/she (to be politically correct) with despondent questions, and teasing him/her (yup) with the potentiality of a hidden fugitive answer. moreover, this manipulation seems effortless and almost unconscious. artist crush indeed.

because of this passage.

“Give up pursuing eloquence, unless

You can speak as you feel! One’s very heart

Must pour it out, with primal power address

One’s hearers and compel them with an art

Deeper than words. Clip and compile, and brew

From the leavings of others your ragout

Of rhetoric, pump from your embers

A few poor sparks that nobody remembers!

Children will gape and fools amire,

If that’s the audience to which you aspire.

But what can blend all hearts into a whole?

Only the language of the soul.”

goethe (david luke translation) :  faust – part I, pp 20